Compiling annotations

...

• or you define aliases (shortcuts/abbreviations), for the annotations and map these to the fully qualified class names for the annotation interfaces. This is done using the annotations.properties file.
  Example:

  Code Block
  java
  OneWay = org.codehaus.backport175.annotation.OneWay TwoWay = org.codehaus.backport175.annotation.TwoWay

  If we now feed this property file to the compiler we are able to write the annotations like this instead:

  Code Block
  java
  /** * @OneWay */ public void method() { ... }

You can have more than one annotation.properties file (see the compiler section) and those are not at all required at runtime.

Rules for annotation naming consistency

...

package demo;
/**
 * @demo.Target.OneWayDefaulted
 */
public class TargetUsingDefaultValue {

  public static interface OneWayDefaulted {
    /**
     * @org.codehaus.backport175.DefaultValue ("default message")
     */
    String message();
  }
}

/**
 * @demo.Target.OneWayDefaulted (message="this is not the default message !")
 */
public class TargetNOTUsingDefaultValue {

  ...
}